Alcohol causes the biggest burden in the Yukon compared to other substances, including illegal drugs.
That’s the Yukon chief medical health officer’s key takeaway from the territorial government’s first substance use surveillance report. The report contains data on drug and alcohol use from emergency medical services (EMS), hospital emergency departments, hospital admissions and the chief coroner.
“When you look at the burden of a bunch of different substances that are contained in the report, you can see fairly clearly that the burden of alcohol use, you know, far exceeds the burden of any other individual substance,” chief medical officer Dr. Sudit Ranade told the News by phone.
“If you look at the overall, you know, burden of substance use in the territory, it's certainly more substantial than the Canadian average."
Hospitalizations due to alcohol in the Yukon have reached up to four times the national rate in recent years, according to the 2023 Yukon health status report, which the government also recently made public. The Yukon’s rate remains 3.5 times higher than Canada’s.
Alcohol has consistently been the substance involved in the largest proportion of substance-related trips to the emergency department, per the surveillance report.
Alcohol makes up more hospital stays compared to other substances, although the proportion of stimulant-related visits has gone up over the years, as noted in the surveillance report.
“When we look at our emergency room visits and our EMS calls related to alcohol and those kinds of things, they paint the picture that there must be an underlying higher rate of use because the burden on the system is greater from alcohol than in other parts of the country,” Ranade said.
A graph in the surveillance report shows that “alcohol-related visits are much higher than those for drug poisoning or substance use excluding alcohol. While the rates for alcohol-related visits have declined from their peak in 2019, the 2023 rate remains very high overall.”
Ranade said the impact of recurring ambulance stops and hospitalizations is time consuming for hospitals, community health centres and the health system to deal with.
“You end up, probably in small communities, seeing many people over and over again,” Ranade said.
That leaves health-care workers wondering how to get patients through more longitudinal or continuous kinds of treatment, so they don’t keep ending up in severe emergency settings, per Ranade.
The Yukon government’s first live-in managed alcohol program opened this fall.
Ranade calls treatment options like the live-in program “important pathways.”
“It's important to connect people, as soon as you can identify them, to those treatment paths. It's not to say that everybody will take them up on it, but when they do, it's a really good option,” Ranade said.
He pointed out the problem is that it takes the focus away from prevention.
“We know that alcohol use in the territory starts fairly early,” Ranade said.
“Treatment stuff is great. It's really important. We also need to start having that conversation around prevention.”
The surveillance report indicates the Whitehorse Emergency Shelter at 405 Alexander St. is a relative hub for people struggling with substances and emergency medical services responding to drug poisonings and alcohol-related calls.
When it comes to paramedic responses to alcohol-related calls, nearly one-third (32.3 per cent or 2,087 counts) were picked up from the emergency shelter between 2019 and 2023, according to the report.
More than 22 per cent of paramedic responses to drug-poisoning calls were called to the location of the shelter in that same five-year time period. That percentage represents 353 cases, as noted in the report.
Most calls regarding drug poisoning (40.2 per cent or 630 cases) were picked up at a residence, 12.1 per cent took place on a street, highway or road, and more than six per cent occurred at a hotel.
For drug poisonings, rates peaked in 2021. In 2023, rates still remained higher than 2019.
The annual rate of hospital stays for harm caused by substance use for the Yukon has been consistently higher than Canada’s rate in recent years, per the report. While the Yukon's rate has dropped since the 2020-21 peak, the most recent rate remains higher than 2018-19.
The Yukon’s annual per-capita rate of opioid toxicity deaths dropped from a peak of 53.5 per 100,000 in 2021 to 37.8 in 2023 and 35.6 in 2024.
“The Yukon’s rate of opioid-toxicity deaths peaked in 2021, surpassing all other provinces and territories. The rate in the Yukon has been declining since then but is still higher than pre-pandemic levels,” the report states.
The surveillance report is intended to inform public health interventions; improve prevention, intervention and support; and prioritize actions in the substance use health emergency strategy, according to a press release.
The report will be updated each quarter.
The new initiative is part of the government’s commitment to evidence-based decision making to address the territory’s substance use health emergency, as noted in the release.
The Yukon government declared a substance use health emergency in January 2022. Some Yukon First Nations have called their own states of emergencies related to substance use.
Ranade said the surveillance report can be used to justify different levels of funding.
“There's certainly a problem with opioids and toxicity and a crisis there, for sure, but there's also this underlying picture of people who are largely affected by alcohol, and we need to start tackling that as well,” he said.
He hopes that key message moves into the decision-making sphere with health partners.
“I think there's a justification for people who are looking for funding through health care, like through the federal government, through the territorial government, to say, like this is an area that needs increased focus and maybe slightly greater resourcing than, sort of, the Canadian average, because of the need,” he said.
“You can't have a strategy to deal with substances without also talking about alcohol.”
The Yukon government has a plan to address the substance use health emergency, released in August 2023. Implementing a managed alcohol program is a goal in the plan. So is opening a sobering centre for people to “recover from the immediate effects of acute drug and alcohol intoxication.”
“Yukon residents have extraordinarily high rates of alcohol consumption. They outpace nearly all other Canadian jurisdictions in heavy drinking and alcohol sales,” reads the Yukon’s strategy, citing a previous Yukon health status report from 2021.
“This leads to high rates of short- and long-term health harms and social and community impacts, including negative impacts to family and community relationships, unemployment or diminished ability to participate in community activities, and family or community violence.”
Cameron Grandy is the Yukon government’s director of mental wellness and substance use services.
“We have not stopped the narrative and focus on alcohol as a really damaging personal and societal substance,” he told the News by phone.
Grandy indicated the Yukon must decide what are the gaps and what are the next stages of funding that need to be requested. That means looking at what has been funded, what has been worked on, what has been working and what communities want to see prioritized.
“What might need to be funded in one community may not be the same as in Whitehorse,” Grandy said.
He said community counsellors are receiving a higher call volume and case load, but there are also more employees than when the branch was created in 2018.
Grandy attributed the increased call volume to potential communications and destigmatization around reaching out for help or people requiring more support following the COVID-19 pandemic. He indicated the reason can be unique to the individual.
“Trauma is 100 per cent an underlying factor with substance use being the symptom,” he said.
Grandy added other factors can lead someone to develop a habit, addiction or problematic use of substances, such as stressors and family-related issues.
“Anybody can call the number which it's 866-456-3838 or 867-456-3838,” he said.
"Please reach out."
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com
